New Delhi, Apr 3 (PTI) A Delhi court has sentenced a man to life-term imprisonment for raping a six-year-old minor girl eight years ago and said he did not deserve any leniency.

Additional sessions judge Anu Aggarwal was hearing the arguments on the man's sentencing after convicting him of rape under IPC and Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.

Also Read | Supreme Court Verdict on WBSSC Jobs: Ineligible Candidates Have To Return INR 11 Lakh to INR 26 Lakh.

"Child sexual abuse can have wide ranging and serious consequences. It affects the psychological and physical well-being of the victim, which hounds her throughout her life, and the child faces immense trauma, which is not even visible," the court said on March 25.

The verdict took into account the severity of the offence and the manner in which the man had committed the crime while injuring the minor in 2017.

Also Read | Karnataka Shocker: Man Kills Wife, 2 Children Before Ending His Life in Kalaburagi.

"The convict does not deserve any leniency," it held.

The court said the man shall suffer "rigorous imprisonment for life, which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of the convict's natural life" under Section 6 of the POCSO Act.

The man had allegedly kidnapped the minor girl when she had gone out to play in the park and sexually assaulted her.

"The severity of the offence can be measured from the injuries on her perineum region. At the age of six years, without any fault of her own, she had to undergo pediatric surgery for repair of her perineum region, and she remained admitted in the hospital for around 15 days," the order said.

The physical pain and the mental trauma the small child endured cannot be measured, it added.

While convicting the accused on March 21, the court rejected the man's defence argument of false identification and having a different name.

The accused's name could have been incorrect, but the victim had identified him, the court said.

"When the accused was shown to the victim through a video link during her examination, she identified the accused and, seeing the accused, she concealed her face in the lap of the support person," the court said.

The verdict observed that once the man had been identified in court as the perpetrator, the dispute over his name was irrelevant.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)